Schumer says climate change will make every year even WORSE than 2020
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer predicted that the effects of could be so 'horrible' that every year could top 'awful' 2020, when COVID-19 first ravaged the United States and the world. 'I tell my constituents, last year with COVID was awful, but in a few years, because of climate change, each year will be worse than COVID and each year will be worse than the next if we don't do anything about it,' the New York Democrat said at a press conference Wednesday on Hill, which was organized by the League of Conservation Voters and Climate Power. Schumer, House Speaker and other top Congressional Democrats spoke at the event, as the party tries to pass the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better social spending bill, which includes a number of key climate change provisions. 'The effect of climate change is just going to be horrible,' Schumer said. 'But don't despair America, don't despair world - our "Build Back Better" [bill] tackles climate in a bold, ambitious way by making targeted investments in American industries, infrastructure, agriculture, to create millions of jobs with good wages, while restoring our manufacturing competitiveness,' the Democratic leader continued. Schumer said he hoped the bill would spur a 'green industrial revolution.' 'While lowering the cost of energy for everyday Americans,' he added. Schumer has said he wants to get Build Back Better passed by Christmas. Senate Democrats are using the process of reconciliation to pass the bill, so they can bypass Republican filibuster attempts. Sen. Ed Markey, who sponsored the 'Green New Deal' proposal in the Senate to compliment Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's action in the House, proclaimed at the press conference Wednesday: 'I am dreaming of a green Christmas.' He encouraged passage of Build Back Better, but also called on President Joe Biden to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and ban oil exports to alleviate Americans' current pain at the gas pump. 'Right now oil companies are taking American consumers and shaking them upside down at gas pumps all across our country, while simultaneously sending a signal to the Republican Party to kill Build Back Better,' Markey said. The Massachusetts Democrat said fossil fuel companies wanted to 'kill a transition to all-electric vehicles, to plug-in hybrids, to battery storage technologies that will lead to inextricably, inevitably to the demise of those companies controlling the agenda of our nation.' 'If we're afraid of Russia's agenda right now, Saudi Arabia's control over our foreign policy in the Middle East, there's one sure and certain thing we can do and it's over the next month,' Markey argued. 'And that is to make sure that we have both of those countries and others like them on a pathway to bankruptcy - because the oil era will be over if we pass this bill,' he said. Pelosi argued that combatting climate change was a 'moral issue.' 'If you believe, as I do that this is God's creation and we have a moral obligation to be good stewards,' the devout Catholic speaker said. 'But even if you don't share that view, religiously, we all share it morally that we have a responsibility to future generations.'